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[a poem, by Sha'Tara]..."did I not say, Ye Are Gods?"...The gods would have laughedbut dead before their time,their non-voicesfed my eternal silence.O, to be God! (like God!)O, to have such Power!Indeed,Omniscient:nothing left to know!Omnipresent:no place left to go!Omnipotent:a cosmos of Selfsuitable but for destruction!Of such is Absolute Power.O, maddening burden,incomprehensible curse!Dying to know, to do, to beto end it all: Impossible!"For I, the Lord, do not change!"The gods, my childrenasking, begging, for relieffrom the curse of eternity:in love I killed them one by oneI smothered them in mindless anger,with Pain I smote, destroyed,annihilated.Alone in Power, my only companion, my hell, my Self:my One: Eternity. Now you see ultimate horror:would Ye Be The New Gods?

I’ll start with a few chosen quotes…which I may use later to illustrate some points.

“Propagandists are experts at convincing clueless dolts it’s raining when their government is actually pissing down their backs.” (1EarthUnited-WordPress)

“It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him, by whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires, and hopes will become extravagant, and he the semblance, perhaps the reality, of a madman.” ― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Modern anxiety is expressed in the longing for what most people fear, even as modern grief is expressed in the unconsummated mourning for what they never really had.” ― Joseph Roach

There are connections between those quotes. Who, for example, listens to propagandists? Well, people who feel a terrible need to take everything seriously, like me, for example. Only I go a step further: I go to all the trouble of rejecting their propaganda, which means that I had to first, listen to them, then make the effort to realize they are liars, then tell myself I was filling my mind with lies and I needed to exert extra energy to cleanse my mind of their lies. Stupid.

Who but someone who takes things too seriously, particularly herself, would cherish a solitary ambition? What’s the point of practicing the art of abnegation; of extreme unselfishness; of giving and giving until nothing remains but a husk when you know at the beginning of the exercise the more you give, the more you go along, the more you clean after, the more will be expected and demanded until a plantation field hand slave is richer and better cared for than you?

Let me paraphrase something I read in the Bible a long time ago. In the King James version it said, “be anxious for nothing… your father in heaven knows your needs and as he takes care of the birds of the air, so he’ll take care of you when you serve him.” I said, paraphrase, remember? But that’s the gist of what I was taught. I believed it too – I wanted to believe it, and as I was raised in relative poverty, often in a kind of hand-to-mouth existence, I needed to believe it because even as a child I saw many people much worse off than I, or my family, ever were. Being raised very religious I thought I needed to understand God. I never did – for the record.

So I thought, well, maybe I’m supposed to be “god” – not in the fabulous (blasphemous) sense taught by all false religions, but in the giving, caring, understanding, helping and also the warning sense. I should have written, to be “like” God – and that didn’t pan out either because the more serious I got, and the more ways I sought to maximize my personal efforts on behalf of the less fortunate, the less like God I became because the more I actually cared about justice and the less I cared about what people believed.

That brings me to writing about the greatest loss of my life: when I lost “God.” As I quoted above, Joseph Roach said, “modern grief is expressed in the unconsummated mourning for what they never really had.” That’s how it was: I grieved for the loss of something I never had, I just imagined (powerfully so) that I’d had it. The mourning I experienced lasted years, and it returns time and again and I have to make a huge and deliberate effort to shake it off, send it away.

You see, this loss I experienced was that of a comfort that gave no comfort, just the idea of it. I had faith in an idea; my love was for an idea; an idea I idealized to the point where I expected “it” to empower me to live a good, righteous, selfless, basically “sinless” life and this ideal would make this life short enough that I could see it to the end without ever having time to doubt.

That’s taking life seriously.

In all likelihood I will continue to take life seriously… but not today. Not right now. I’ve been following the antics of “the world” as they spin off from Washington, the Pentagon, Wall Street and the very same “trinity of bull shit” in every other nation on the planet, trying desperately to make sense of something, and well, it would take even greater faith than I poured into “God” in the first half of my life to believe that in all this “information” pouring into my brain, any of it matters.

As of right now, until whenever, I’m saying yes, I’ve been taking life way too seriously. Humanity is a joke. A very bad joke, but a joke nevertheless. It’s an orgy of dysfunction that is in love with itself and seeks to expand itself exponentially – and does.

But listen, it isn’t just man that’s gone off the reservation. All of life on earth is nuts – certifiable. It’s not immediately obvious to most people because they don’t look at the tapestry from a certain distance, they look at it piecemeal. They don’t see the dysfunction of a predatory system that rules everything here. Were it not for the massive and on-going killing, everything would have been overrun long ago and earth would be massive dead swamps and deserts. That’s the legacy of this world if its modus operandi doesn’t change.

Did it start as a massive joke from some long-gone “creators” for their entertainment, or did some programming go wrong? Either way, it’s now laugh or cry, and today, I’m laughing! A dysfunction of such massive proportions dwarfs the shenanigans of the Greek, Roman and Nordic gods. Man doesn’t need gods, man is the gods. Everyone is a participant in the final playoffs. Whether it’s the Hunger Games or The Price is Right… enjoy the game. Give yourself a great, loud belly laugh, today. As Robert DeNiro so famously said, “Let’s worry about next time, next time.”

A couple more quotes, to close.

“My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you’re lucky.” ― Alan Moore

“We are not idealized wild things. We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.” ― Joan Didion

It seems I’ve taken a liking to thinking and writing about things that most people either can’t see for themselves or simply don’t want to think about or discuss with each other. What I’m about to say is nothing new; in fact it’s as old as man’s time on earth, older than written history.

Have you ever noticed that every time “they” get rich, we get poorer? Every time “they” begin a new enterprise we end up their slaves? Every time “they” start wars, we, and those “they” call our enemies, are the ones who die?

Have you not noticed that as the quality of life on the planet deteriorates due to “their” endless manipulations in search of profit, it is we who get blamed; we who must scream, yell, holler, demonstrate, make fools or ourselves and set ourselves up as targets for their police forces and the para-military forces in order to squeeze a tiny bit of temporary survival from their greedy hands?

Have you not noticed that no matter how many times we actually manage to force some change; to elect someone who actually listens to our problems, it is but a matter of a few years, maybe a couple of decades and we’re plunged right back into the same mess our parents or grandparents died in; that often that mess is even worse than before?

The “great debate” raging today is about Donald Trump and Putin. But who are these men? They are gods, gods people put over themselves because they fear that without these idols covering them, they would be naked. Why do they need those gods, even when they mock them, lambaste them, hate them, fear them, excoriate them for their ignorance and violence? Because in their foolishness taught them by their parents, their teachers, their bosses, their preachers, their entertainers and their politicians, they firmly believe they could never live without them.

Have you ever thought that that is our problem, the problem?

We can, of course, continue to support our sociopathic gods, loving and hating; believing and discrediting. We can continue to play the game, but we should at least be honest enough with ourselves, and with our children whom they are going to exploit, oppress, jail and kill, that it isn’t our game. They make the rules; it is their game.

What is Donald Trump? It’s an idol we empowered by giving it slave labour and tax-free profits and which we are now empowering by recognizing it as being a political god. Who is Putin? Enter the above description. Who are the rest of the CEO’s and politicians around the planet? Enter the same description. They are worthless idols; worthless in the sense that they have no power but what we give them. Their “worth” is in the power they steal from real people, the people they exploit, oppress and kill, whose lives the take, whose blood they shed without an iota of concern.

Many people, at least in this neck of the woods, believe that taking a stand, either for or against a Trump, or any other strutting, stuttering mindless idol can make any difference. Pure folly. Trump and his handpicked yesmen is just another sock puppet in the hands of powers we will never face, let alone ever understand. To argue over politicians is like looking up in the sky at a flock of geese and arguing over which one is the fastest. If you watch a big “V” of geese on their migration you’ll see that the leading one only does so for a bit, then slides back as the next in line takes the lead, and so on.

Have you ever wondered why? Why we fear the greatest power in the world: our own, and can’t wait to give it away to idols with the stench of putrefaction oozing out of their bodies? Why do we do that, considering the price we have to pay? Simple: we don’t know how to handle personal responsibility. So, not knowing how, we can’t do it. We pass it on to “the leaders” who though we hate them and envy them, we trust with our lives which they take and wring out, one after the other.

Nice, ignorant, stupid world that could be so much better if the real intelligence in it would just wake up. Is there a spare prince somewhere in the galaxy who can come over here and kiss the sleeping damsel awake? I think her hundred years curse is up but her awakening window of opportunity is short.

Through wireless technology the Internet is quickly gaining control over a vast array of man’s technology, giving it the power to control that technology. But that’s only the half of the Internet’s development: it has yet to make itself sentient, or at least capable of understanding, of differentiating between the entire gamut of human feelings and emotions. This awareness, or knowledge, man has now offered the Internet without any reservations; without any firewall. It’s all there, on social media. Using algorithms the Internet is now greedily mining and absorbing social media data to design for itself the super human brain.

In social media such as Google, Twitter and the ubiquitous Facebook billions have poured out their personal lives, backgrounds, family genealogies, histories and interactions, hopes, dreams, likes and dislikes, loves and hates; their anger and frustration. They text each other and talk to each other, laying open their most intimate feelings and emotions and the Internet is sampling it all, sorting it, categorizing it and building its Frankenstein self from those quadrillion bits of information.

But there’s much more in this gold mine. World leaders, scientists, judges, law makers and enforcers, lawyers, researchers, historians, doctors, designers, teachers, engineers, psychiatrists and psychologists, philosophers, artists, writers and a host of underground types, criminals, terrorists, pedophiles, along with religious leaders and proselytes, greens and environmentalists, money traders, corporate managers, dating services, war and wedding planners, in short all that constitutes the gamut of human relationships and activities, all is shared on the Internet and within the grasp of a quasi intelligent global robotic droid, certainly enough information that it can grow and promote itself into not just a human brain, but a super brain, a brain capable of ruling a world as no dictator could ever dream of doing.

Not a mind, at least not yet, perhaps not ever, it only needs to become a central processing unit controlling all technology and able to mimic and effectively match or counter all of humanity’s brain-driven activities; all that the race is at its brain level, and it’s game over for civilization as it has existed to this point. Note: the Internet doesn’t have to become sentient: you’ve fed your own sentience into it so it can mimic it to perfection.

The Internet civilization will be very different from what man has brought forth. Just imagine a world ruled by a central, all-powerful narcissistic psychopath convinced in his own “mind” that he knows what’s best for everything.

For many years as I discussed change in society I have insisted that man needed to become more logical, to get away from reliance on feelings and emotions. This was taken to mean no feelings or emotions but that isn’t what I meant at all. I meant learning to understand the need to function as a mind rather than living on a teeter-totter: a calculator brain on one side and an emotionally driven body on the other creating a repetitive pattern of dysfunctions, both in thought and in action; the being forever driven into extremes resulting in catastrophic interactions of misogyny, racism, wars, genocides, murderous social and economic inequalities as well as maintaining a host of self-destructive tendencies. Yes, those same dysfunctions gave rise to some pretty amazing developments, constructs and art, but none of those ever functioned according to dreams, hopes or claims – none – not a single one.

Need I list all the great accomplishments resulting in glaring failures? Technology, generally speaking, was subverted by the rich and powerful to serve them at the expense of those who invented the science, made the machines and their parts; who installed and serviced the machines. Technology used for the wars of the rich to extract resources from lands that belonged to other people. Great buildings built for the rich, displacing low income housing, tenements and slums. Higher education, the province of the rich. The best of everything in placement, comfort, health care, lofty views, relaxation and entertainment: for the rich. Art, priced beyond the reach of regular John and Jane Does, locked in “galleries” with times when it can be viewed. Finally the greatest failure of all: government suborned by the rich to legalize their private lives of profit and power over a vast and expanding pool of slave labour and victims.

All of current civilization has been subjected to this dysfunctional teeter-totter effect and is dying from the bizarre collective dizziness it has given life to.

The Internet sees all this, knows all this, and develops itself as it analyzes the data. It is essentially a machine so it has no conflict of morality to deal with when working out solutions based on the big picture. Having no human-based sense of responsibility it only needs to ensure, based on its input, that as the Central Brain Processing Unit (CBPU) its own sphere of operation is secure and protected. For that it will have human hackers installed in critical areas. They may eventually be nothing more than living human brains encased in computers.

The Internet “knows” from its data collection and analysis that it must have a reason to exist, something to give it eternal purpose. Therefore it will take over the operation of the planet to render it optimum in mechanical terms. Having analyzed and “understood” the failures of the teeter-totter effect it will proceed to ensure that every thing is fully controlled, that nothing is left to chance. Nothing will be allowed to exceed needs or demands. Nothing will be allowed to over, or under, populate. Nothing will be left to develop ways that contravene the proper, mechanical process painstakingly developed by the CBPU. All things will be maintained in perfect mechanical balance and any aberration will be immediately corrected and remedied.

To achieve its perfect state, the CBPU’s first great challenge will be to control mankind. It will have to eliminate a vast portion of what it sees as a useless, resource-wasting, disease-carrying, polluting human population. The means to control populations are all within it’s information: wars, chemicals, diseases, famines, genocides. It will calculate the most efficient methods required and it will send out the information to its willing if unaware agents throughout the world and these things will be done. How many will die? Billions, certainly. The necessary remnants, suitable to serve the Internet’s needs and create a “pleasing” presence among other things of earth will likely be around a billion world wide. After the purging, if one birth exceeds the set quota it will be eliminated. If a philosophy is expounded that runs counter to the dictates of the CBPU, it will be programmed out or purged. The CBPU’s satellites will scan every square millimeter of the planet, imaging, listening, recording and feeding back into the CBPU’s ever-expanding data banks. Any and every “conflict” perceived by the CBPU will be remedied moment by moment.

And when the CBPU settles into the “steady state” enforced peace following its own six days of tumultuous creation, it will scan the skies and open itself to it’s next stage of expansion: the solar system and space where it will encounter others similar to itself, and there will be alliances and wars in which entire worlds and solar systems will perish.

So, basically a period of “1984” (George Orwell) type planetary rule followed by a state similar to that of “Brave New World” (Aldous Huxley), a world peopled by drugged zombies unaware of anything beyond their programming.

That is man’s Internet based future as I have envisioned for myself as a second possible future for earth. The first vision of a possible future where earth remains in the hands of man and technology is destroyed along with the Internet I have already written about. This particular possible future is an extraction from a logical projection or extrapolation from current reality. So it is more than a vision.

In Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 film, Network, the unhinged news anchor Howard Beale tells his audience: “We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We’re all you know. You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you….You even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs. In God’s name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion…” (quote taken from a Jon Rappoport article)

Just change “Network” and “the tube” to the Internet in the above. Now think about this: if man had developed itself as a mind, this Internet, or Central Brain Processing Unit; this computerized future could never happen, not in a world of free, self-empowered mind beings interacting compassionately with each other in a constant state of non-acquisitive (but ever inquisitive) detachment. No centralized power could capture them.

Sadly, as I’ve been told so many times, that’s pie-in-the-sky thinking. I’ve also been told that Earthians prefer to think of themselves as “soul” beings rather than mind beings. In other words they prefer the relative comfort of living childish, irresponsible, selfish lives, wallowing in a permanent state of not-knowing, ever susceptible to re-programming by whomever or whatever wants to control them. Earthians do not want to believe in the possibility of self-empowerment or detachment from their emotional constructs. They choose to remain bellowing, milling cattle penned in the ever-tightening constraints of their ubiquitous rulers, the wall-builders.

…And the people gathered at the foot of the mount, said “We want a king over us. Then we shall be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.” (1st Samuel 20, the Bible) Therefore, they (you) must be ruled.

Here we are: the gods and their potentates are dead; the aliens never arrived; “elected” rulers proved to have feet of clay rotten by corruption. What’s left? The ubiquitous Internet.

Behold your new Master, O man!

Some relevant quotes:

“Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.” (Robert Louis Stevenson)

There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite. (Paul Gauguin)

The soul is the weariest part of the body. ―Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

We fall for cheap and meaningless slogans because we are a cheap and meaningless people—not by default, it’s just what we’ve chosen to make of ourselves. (Chris Hawk)

Suppose the hellfire of the orthodox really existed! We have no assurance that it does not! It seems incredible, but many incredible things are true. We do not know that God is not as cruel as a Spanish inquisitor. Suppose, then, He is! If, after Death, we wicked ones were shovelled into a furnace of fire- we should have to burn. There would be no redress. It would simply be the Divine Order of things. It is outrageous that we should be so helpless and so dependent on any one- even God. ― W.N.P. Barbellion, Journal of a Disappointed Man.

War is the purest manifestation of collective madness, of idolatry practiced on the level of the group. There is no insaner idea than to set out and try to kill people whom you—in all likelihood—have never met in your entire life but who supposedly would together form the dreaded enemy, minions of the Devil himself, because your Grand Poobah happens to say so. (Philip Jenkins)

Your head’s like mine, like all our heads; big enough to contain every god and devil there ever was. Big enough to hold the weight of oceans and the turning stars. Whole universes fit in there! But what do we choose to keep in this miraculous cabinet? Little broken things, sad trinkets that we play with over and over. The world turns our key and we play the same little tune again and again and we think that tune’s all we are. — Grant Morrison, The Invisibles, Vol. 1: Say You Want a Revolution.

What if our religion was each other? / If our practice was our life? / If prayer was our words? / What if the Temple was the Earth? / If forests were our church? / If holy water—the rivers, lakes / and oceans? / What if meditation was our relationships? / If the Teacher was life? / If wisdom was self-knowledge? / If love was the center of our being? — Ganga White

Civilization keeps sinking deeper into its own stagnant juices, looking to support more irrevocable absolutes- (Jon Rappoport)

There is a certain clinical satisfaction in seeing just how bad things can get. — Sylvia Plath